BESA chief executive David Frise
standby and mobile phones left on charge overnight; right up to massive engineering challenges like improving storage of renewable energy and transmission losses from the grid mean we are not making the best use of what we already have.”
Opportunity
Tackling all of this will create economic opportunity while simultaneously reducing the damage we are doing to the environment. It also means the country can address some of its worst social justice issues, Mr Frise believes. The Hackitt Review identified the importance of creating “a culture change and a more responsible building industry, from design, through to construction and management”. “This is all about social justice,” said
Mr Frise. “A civilised society is founded on how it treats its people – and specifically the most vulnerable. A low carbon built environment will be a high quality built environment that offers a way out of poverty and poor health. “The government’s latest grand
plan for the NHS is to save 500,000 lives over the next 10 years by focusing on prevention and early detection. If you want to prevent people getting ill then they must live, work and play in civilised conditions. If we continue to view buildings as purely financial investments, the
problems of quantity and quality will persist. We need to recognise that building homes is also a ‘social’ investment as well as being a way to reduce climate change.” Baroness Brown also pointed out that poor quality housing costs the NHS between 1.4 and two billion pounds a year because of the health problems it creates. High quality, low carbon systems can lift thousands of families out of fuel poverty by slashing energy bills, but more importantly they will be part of a retrofit programme that creates a wonderful legacy of high quality housing and facilities supporting social mobility and opportunity. “Our sector has a huge part to play, but we must champion the high technical standards and stress the need for building ‘clients’ to insist on seeing evidence of competence – as proposed by Dame Judith in her review,” added Mr Frise. “If you want high quality buildings – new build and retrofit – then you must employ competent people focused on doing a good job.”
He added that the Association was
actively engaging with government to develop the solutions and help deliver on the promise to decarbonise the built environment.
practice in the design and operation of heat networks. Ross Anderson, director of MEHNA explains. In 2017 the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) noted: “Heat networks form an important part of our plan to reduce carbon and cut heating bills for customers (domestic and commercial).” More recently the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has launched a £320 million Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP) which will offer grants and loans to both the public and private sectors in England and Wales, for networks serving two or more buildings. Clearly, then, heat networks are destined to play a key role in the
ViewPoint M
One voice for heat networks products
EHNA is a relatively new division of the Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA) established to support and promote best
UK’s carbon reduction strategy. However, heat networks use a range of products, many supplied through members of divisions within the EUA, such as ICOM, the Heating and Hot Water Industry Council (HHIC), the Hot Water Association (HWA) and Utilities Network (UN). Consequently, it was decided to create a new division - called the Manufacturers of Equipment of Heat Networks Association (MEHNA) - that would give a shared voice for suppliers of heat network products. This move has been welcomed by BEIS, and MEHNA is already working with the Heat Network Delivery Unit and the metering and billing departments of BEIS. MEHNA’s role is to represent the product manufacturers in discussions on regulations and standards with a view to ensuring heat networks are designed to operate as efficiently as possible. As well as addressing product design and operation, MEHNA is working closely with the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) and the Association for Decentralised Energy (ADE). For example, CIBSE is reviewing its Code of Practice for heat network design (CP1) and MEHNA is involved in the review process by compiling members’ comments and ensuring that necessary changes are made to the document. Another early success for MEHNA has been productive dialogue with the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA), which publishes a test regime for HIUs. Following input from MEHNA the test regime has been modified to more closely reflect the market and we are pleased that three MEHNA members have been appointed to the steering group and Technical Committee for the BESA test regime. Also challenging is the lack of standards in some areas of the heat network system and MEHNA is working with the British Standards Institution (BSI) to remedy this shortfall. As part of this, we are working with BSI in writing a new standard for HIUs that will bring a major change in the design, manufacture and operation of HIUs. The progress made already is a clear indication of the need for a
single voice that supports the products in this growing market and MEHNA has already attracted several members that were not formerly involved with the EUA. There is still much to do and we will continue our work to represent members’ views in this area.
www.heatingandventilating.net
June 2019
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